Habitat conservation plans: Fading away in la-la land

Wow, check it out: The Riverside Press-Enterprise this month published some of the most important environmental journalism of 2006, a project on how a massive “habitat conservation plan” is actually an excuse to destroy quite a bit of endangered species’ habitat.

“A Difficult Balance” takes a revealing look at the Western Riverside County Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan and concludes:

Some of the best places for western Riverside County’s rarest animals and plants face destruction by developers despite a costly, sweeping plan to protect such habitat, a three-month investigation by The Press-Enterprise has found. In case after case, county and city officials have approved homes, stores and industry on land they had identifed as essential habitat.

Dehli Sands Flower-Loving Fly

Reporters Duane W. Gang, David Danelski, Devona Wells, Jennifer Bowles and Cassie MacDuff produced a clear-eyed, by-the-numbers look showing convincingly that developers are getting away with murdering endangered species by wiping out their habitat.

If this outrage sounds a little familiar, it should. The Dateline Earth team last year took a national look at the phenomenon and concluded these Endangered Species Act exemptions are a far cry from the way the way the politicians hawk them. Our bottom line: It might be more honest to call them “habitat destruction plans.”

But in the Riverside County example, even the plan isn’t being followed. At some point, you have to ask: Is this really legal? Just down the road from Riverside, U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster — a Reagan appointee, btw — ruled a few months ago that the answer for San Diego’s plan is no. The enviro group spearheading that challenge was the Center for Biological Diversity, which also is monitoring the Riverside plan.

As is so often the case, secrecy in process helps lead to bad environmental policy, the Press-Enterprise found:

When a proposed development conflicts with the habitat plan, local officials often resolve the matter with a developer behind closed doors. Such meetings have no agendas and no formal minutes. Brief handwritten notes often are the only records of the negotiations.

Update 12/29 3 p.m.: I should add that Mike Lee down at the San Diego Union Tribune has been keeping an eye on the San Diego plan, including this story on Judge Brewster’s ruling and this piece on a study that questioned the conservation value of the big multispecies plans and asked “Where’s the science?”